Sebastian Vettel is confident of a good weekend in Montreal despite Red Bull’s inherent weakness in recent years on tracks dominated by long straights.
Vettel finished fourth in last year’s eventful strategy-dominated race, and in Monaco both Christian Horner and Adrian Newey admitted to this blog that Montreal was still not the team’s favourite track.
“We will see where we are,” said the German today. “I’m quite confident. Last year I think we had a good car here, we didn’t win, we were not on the podium, but I think we started the race on a different strategy, which turned out not to work. It was a surprise for us at the time.
“But we learned our lesson, and for this year we’ll see where we are with tyres, how they work, how they last, how long they last. I think in terms of pace, we should be OK. We know that long straight lines and so on are not always in our favour. Our car is very competitive in corners, fast corners. We don’t have many fast corners around here. So we’ll see.”
Not surprisingly, Vettel says this weekend will be about tyres.
“We’re bringing some new bits here, not massive, but again little steps. We’ll see tomorrow where we are, how we are working with the tyres. It can turn out differently maybe if you work better with the tyres, worse with the tyres, compared with other teams.
“I think it’s one of the most difficult weekends here, because the track is different, the asphalt is very smooth, so tyres as I mentioned earlier will be very important. Plus you’ve got the walls very close in some places. I felt it in 2008 where I couldn’t do qualifying, because of hitting the wall in practice. It’s a long weekend.”
Adam Cooper F1 